Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X - OT

The battle theme isn't even bad. The rapper's flow is terrible, but aside from how corny they are the lyrics aren't too bad, and the instrumentation is great. The singer's decent too. Also, this isn't directed at anyone in particular, but I see the "I miss Yoko Shimomura" line a lot, and I don't really get it. She did like ten tracks out of a 90-odd track OST, and Time to Fight is worse to me than this.

I will say that nearly everything in the anime this person's done is way better in context than outside. DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAAAAAY is not actually that great on its own but while watching Kill la Kill it is the best thing.

These are obviously very loosely defined genres but I would strongly place Xenoblade Chronicles in the fantasy genre. Of course, I'd also place Star Wars in the fantasy genre. Which people tend to react against because they're used to thinking space=sci-fi.

My general kind of catch-all definition of whether something counts as sci-fi or fantasy is whether this concept could plausibly exist within our own universe (either elsewhere in the universe or in the past or future of humanity). Star Trek could conceivably exist in a hypothetical future as it's largely based on speculative ideas in current science. Star Wars is very unlikely to exist in our universe because the concept of "the force" is essentially made-up magic. I haven't finished Xenoblade Chronicles yet so I couldn't say for certain, but based on what I'd played it didn't seem like this was being proposed as something that could ever really happen. There's magic and robot gods and sentient swords that can cut metal but not skin etc etc.

Most of Aldnoah Zero's music is pretty great on its own, imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Apdfz4HNrY Isn't terrible, (it isn't great, either) but unless there are 10 more battle themes this song will become the worst song in existence, if you play XCX for more than 10 hours, that is. Sustained repetition makes all decent music awful; that's what happened to 'Dog Days are Over' for me. I just hate that song now because some idiot disc jockey (or in this case, music director) decided that it would be cool to have the same song play every 20 minutes for weeks and weeks.

I feel as though the battle theme will sound a lot better when actually playing the game.

Edit: There's also a chance there's a purely instrumental version of the song.

She doesn't have to have composed the vast majority of the soundtrack in order for people to miss her; its about the quality of the tracks she composed, not the quantity. Shimomura composed most of the pieces I really loved in XC (the main theme, unfinished battle, both Colony 9 themes, etc) alongside ACE+, who composed a lot of my personal favourites too. I think it's a reasonable thing to say.

Also, in response to the difficulties in composing for XCX's sci-do setting, I can see why you may think that, but in all honesty I think the composers of XC's soundtrack have demonstrated a sufficient enough degree of versatility to compose for a different setting - I couldn't really see them having huge amounts of trouble. I also think that reasoning is slightly fallacial because - in my own experience - it's hard to imagine any game with a different soundtrack, because you become accustomed to the original tracks and thus can't really see it any other way since the music itself often inflicts heavily upon how you view the in-game world.

But at the end of the day, Sawano is composing the OST, so I'll just keep holding out hope that he composes some better battle themes in the future. Some more real instrumentation would be a good starting point in my opinion~

I hope a Link amiibo activates a Link costume!

What a great idea! I think it'd look like this;

"Why so serious..."

Hahahaha. I would like to see Cross in a Link costume just for fun. Even a Samus costume and Captain Falcon costume would be epic for me.

Elma would look pretty cool in a Samus costume honestly.

You mean... A Zero Suit Elma?
..............
DROOLS

I do not believe it is humanly possible for me to more excited about this game. I'm more excited about this than Zelda U, and I never thought those words would ever come out of my mouth (or be typed by my hands...)

Me too. But part of that's surely because we know next-to-nothing about Zelda. The only thing we don't really know about this is the details of the story.

Well, I'm.already impressed by XCX. I already know Zelda U will be a good game but it will need a very good story and gameplay to impress me.

What are you impressed by?

Just listened to the battle theme. It was great until I started hearing rapping. Just. No.

The mech gameplay, the in depth customization, the music, Planet Mira, and the list runs on. All that stuff XCX has is just making me smile and hungry for the game. Zelda U will be a good game. I know it won't be garbage.

Yeah, pretty much the same stuff has me most excited as well. Looking at some gameplay footage has me really pumped for this.

So Final Fantasy XV demo came out and many people on YouTube love it and are very excited for the full game. Heck, the demo even washed away some of my worries for FF XV.
What's my point?
XCX demo should happen.... Please... It can have a huge positive impact like FF XV's demo.